SYDNEY, Sept 27 (Reuters) - Australians are suddenly a whole lot better off after the government statistician "found" A$325 billion ($338 billion) in share assets previously unrecognised. The Australian Bureau of Statistics on Thursday released its latest report on household assets which included massive upward revisions to estimates for equity holdings. Total financial assets were now put at A$3.1 trillion at the end of March, compared to the...

By David Milliken LONDON (Reuters) - They already know what rock'n'roll is worth, so now Britain's statisticians are getting to grips with sex and drugs in a bid to give a broader view of the size of the economy. The fruit of their research is that sales of illegal drugs and sexual services add around 10 billion pounds ($16.7 billion) to Britain's economic activity each year, making up just under 1 percent of total economic output. Britain's Office for...

(Reuters) - Nate Silver, the statistician who earned star status by correctly predicting the 2012 U.S. presidential election in all 50 states, said on Monday he is moving his popular FiveThirtyEight blog to sports media company ESPN from the New York Times. Disney-owned ESPN said it is buying the URL http://www.fivethirtyeight.com and the trade name for an undisclosed sum. The relaunched site will encompass not only sports, but also politics and elections,...

By Patrick Rucker WASHINGTON, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Statistician Steve Hanway had expected to spend Tuesday reviewing a tally of far-flung childhood injuries in his job at the U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission, a federal agency that identifies household perils. Instead, Hanway spent the day sidelined in his home in Gaithersburg, Maryland, one of about 800,000 federal workers furloughed in the first U.S. government shutdown in 17 years. ...

John S. Phillips, a pioneer baseball statistician and life-long Chicagoan, died Thursday after a long illness at the Lee Manor Health Care Residence in Des Plaines. Death came one day before what would have been his 89th birthday. Mr. Phillips was among the oldest living members of the Baseball Writers Association of America and for many years carried the No. 1 card. He also served several terms as chairman of the BBWAA's Chicago chapter and helped found the Chicago Pitch and Hit Club.

In the last week or so, an intense kerfuffle broke out over the poll-prognosticator Nate Silver and his blog at the New York Times, FiveThirtyEight. Silver, a statistician, has been predicting a decisive Obama victory for a very long time, based on his very complicated statistical model, which very, very few of his fans or detractors understand. On any given day, Silver might have announced that -- given the new polling data -- "the model" was now finding that the president had an 86.3 percent...

Whether or not they possess the title of statistician, those with statistical training will see favorable job opportunities really add up over the next few years. According to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) employment of those with the title of statistician will grow little through 2008. But many professionals with bachelor's degrees, and a few master's degree holders as well, will be employed in jobs that don't bear the title statistician, but do...

(Reuters) - Nate Silver, the statistician who earned star status by correctly predicting the 2012 U.S. presidential election in all 50 states, said on Monday he is moving his popular FiveThirtyEight blog to sports media company ESPN from the New York Times. Disney-owned ESPN said it is buying the URL http://www.fivethirtyeight.com and the trade name for an undisclosed sum. The relaunched site will encompass not only sports, but also politics and elections,...

At first glance, it appears Marty Aronoff is living every sports fan's fantasy. As a sports statistician for CBS, ESPN and TNT, he has attended sporting events from Minneapolis to Madrid, from Toronto to Tokyo. He gets courtside seats, he stays in luxurious hotels, he is on a first-name basis with high-profile athletes and announcers. But after 20 years of criss-crossing the globe, Aronoff knows that his "dream" life has some drawbacks. "One of the happiest...

ESPN has officially confirmed that Nate Silver, the statistician behind political analysis site FiveThirtyEight.com, will join the sports network in a multifacted role later this year. The addition of Silver will "really extend our leadership in using analytics in our storytelling," noted ESPN prexy John Skipper, who emphasized that Silver will maintain significant independence while under the ESPN umbrella. While ESPN did not disclose the financial details of the deal, Skipper dubbed the pact...

It's like the centuries-old philosophical axiom of a tree falling in a forest: If nobody hears it, does it make a sound? The same question applies to Bulls statistician Bob Rosenberg. If Rosenberg isn't at a professional Chicago sports event, does it really take place? Rosenberg, the Cal Ripken of basketball statisticians, has worked every home game in Bulls franchise history. How many is that? "One thousand, two hundred, ten regular-season games, 102...

Following is a summary of current odd news briefs. U.N. chief duped by prank call from fake Canadian PM UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A pair of Canadian radio comedians said on Thursday it took them less than an hour to get U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on the phone during international diplomacy's busiest week - by pretending to be Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Ban was between meetings at the U.N. General Assembly of world leaders on Wednesday when he took a phone call...

What would you do with $50 billion, assuming that the goal was to benefit humankind as opposed to owning a Lear jet or a tropical island? To answer that question, Bjorn Lomborg, a statistician and environmental iconoclast, brought eight economists, including three Nobel Prize winners, to this city recently to rank the world's 10 worst problems. Forget politics, they were told, just look at how to get the most bang for the buck. After studying all the contenders and...

SYDNEY, Sept 27 (Reuters) - Australians are suddenly a whole lot better off after the government statistician "found" A$325 billion ($338 billion) in share assets previously unrecognised. The Australian Bureau of Statistics on Thursday released its latest report on household assets which included massive upward revisions to estimates for equity holdings. Total financial assets were now put at A$3.1 trillion at the end of March, compared to the...

William Kruskal's appetite for knowledge was so great that he overwhelmed colleagues with bundles of essays, research data and even novels that he had read and thought others should read. The theoretical statistician drew on a vast catalog of outside interests as he helped develop the framework used by federal agencies to measure how healthy, anxious, old, rich, poor or carefree America is. Mr. Kruskal, 85, appointed by President Richard Nixon to a commission to review the gathering, analysis and...